Manchivadu is a typical ‘Super Good’ film. There a village bumpkin who suddenly finds himself being drawn to one of his NRI cousins who has come to the village to spend sometime with the family. Slowly, she brings about a change in him and he wins over the entire family with his ‘heroic’ deeds. Despite this super good formula, the only problem with Manchivadu is it uses the template which was a blockbuster in the 90s. The film has Tanish and a newcomer Bhama in lead roles and Lakshminarayana directed the film.

What’s the story? Tanish stars as Raja, a kind-hearted village bumpkin whose deeds embarrass his grandfather (K Vishwanath) every now and then. One fine day, his cousin comes along with her family for a family ceremony and Raja falls in love with her instantly. However, the girl is unaware of Raja’s feelings for her. In the meantime, Raja and his friend (Raghubabu) hatch a plot to evoke sympathy from Raja’s cousin. However, their plan backfires and Raja finds himself on the verge of losing his love interest forever. The rest of the story is about how he goes on a damage control and save the day for everyone.

Whatever said and done, the film has its heart at the right place. As soon as the film opens and the theme gets clear, it takes you back to the days of films like Suryavamsham, Raja where Venkatesh played such roles to perfection. Acting wise, Tanish tries too hard to evoke some sympathy; however it’s left to one’s discretion to conclude whether he’s effective or not. K Vishwanath finds himself in yet another tailor made role. But his role hardly makes an impact due to poor characterization and mediocre dialogues. Newcomer Bhama stutters in finding her place in this age old drama. Her character’s sympathy for Raja is extremely superficial and one can guess the twist in the end long before it occurs.

Good intent doesn’t necessarily make good cinema and that’s exactly what the problem with this film is. Scene after scene smells of mediocrity in terms of writing and there’s not one incidence which would make us empathize with the characters onscreen. At a time when this genre had become almost extinct, Manchivadu is a fine example of why it had become extinct in first place. Maybe the film would have worked had it released 20 years ago!

Technical Departments : Couple of songs composed by Shilpi are pleasant on the ears. Cinematography is alright, although there’s nothing special about it. Editing is okay. If there’s one major complaint about this film, then it has to be about Lakshminarayana’s writing and direction. A story like this usually works only when there’s a strong lead pair and both Tanish and Bhama are misfits in the story. But more than that, it’s the director who’s to be blamed for ripping off everything which we have already seen in some of the earlier films from the same banner.

Bottomline : Films like these are proof enough that writing a film is not everyone’s cup of tea. And if you want to pay an ode or rip something off, please do take care that you do it in your own style. If only the director had ‘run’ the script of Manchivadu on his computer, the entire server would have crashed due to gazillion #RedundancyErrors! Two thumbs down for the film…and for goddsake please move on from this theme.